September 8, 2012

But actually, ironically, that kind of respect entails massive disrespect. You say yes and you shut the fuck up in his presence, and that means the only way people can have a serious back-and-forth debate on the subject is if they exclude John Lewis.

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Pierce has a nice sidebar at his blog under the heading "About this blog." I read it for the first time, by chance, just now. The penultimate sentence is:

It will be the belief of this blog that, as Christopher Hitchens once said, the only correct answer to the question, "Is nothing sacred?" is "No."

Lewis is used in the way that Pierce outlines, to cut short debate. I'm tempted to say that the party appropriates him and uses him, but to say that would be to exhibit the very form of disrespect I'm describing in this post.

Speaking of lack of back and forth: I don't bother having a conversation with anyone who honestly can't see, or pretends he can't see, that there are solid arguments for someone to prove that he or she is eligible to vote at the polls, and instead keeps beating the 'voter suppression' drum. Screw those guys. I'll leave it to more patient people than I to engage with them.

Can't we just assign various people the role of "absolute moral authority" on specific topics and then let them make all the decisions for that topic? Wouldn't that be a smart way to do things? Who needs democracy anyway, or a plurality of opinions, when we have such expertise just waiting to fill the need?

"Lewis is used in the way that Pierce outlines, to cut short debate. "

Speaking of cutting debate short, this is, of course, a key tactic of the Left. Fortunately, Coulter put a big hurt on it with her observations on the 9/11 widows, and there has been much less of it,lately.

We need to be taking names and keeping a list and get these people after the Republican landslide in November. These people are enemies of American and need to be treated as such.

And screw the Voting Rights Act. Seriously! Not every jiving buffoon should be allowed to vote more goodies for themselves. If we pared down who votes to individuals who behave like true citizens we would not be in the mess we are now in. The Voting Rights Act has allowed all kinds of crooks to get elected. I would have Clinton and Obama at the top of that list.

Why would anyone object to allowing only those who can read English to vote? If you are either to dumb to know how to read or you just fell off the boat (or sneaked across the boarder) so recently that you have not bother to figure out how to read english then you sure the hell shouldn't be voting in U.S. elections!

Republicans do see illegals, offshoring, free trade, and H1-Bs as the way to suppress greedy workers by way of wages - from stealing money that should go to the NOble Doer-Folk, the Jobs Creators who are the top dogs.

Remember after 9/11 when we closed down airports for hours because "a person breached The Heroes Who Keep Us All Safe's "Security Zone?"Then the same night on TV you could watch hundreds of Mexicans, Guatemalens, Syrians, etc. running under a fence at a single Border ranch on the ranchers "Illegals Cam?"

Does the fact that two judges that have heard evidence and testimony about Voter ID laws and suppression voter has found none? That two states that held elections with voter ID laws saw an increase in voters?

What about my right to not have my vote nullified? Don't I have some rights in this debate? In Iowa a judge is hearing the case about the Secretary of State attempting to cross reference voting lists of foreign nationals with DOT drivers licences. Those bringing suit claim 'the people' have not had a chance for input. Ignoring the fact that the Sec. of State was elected to office running on the promise to clean up the voting. The people did have the chance to be heard, and in two years they can be heard again. Our system of govt should be allowed to self govern at the polls, not by judicial fiat.

Or how about the fact that under the 'equal protection' constitutional doctrine, Things like buying a gun or renting a post office box,can no longer require an ID?

If your main debating point is, "Shut Up!" then you clearly have no real argument, and have lost the debate.

Nope - not online. Have you seen how people "debate" online? Facts mean nothing. They lose and, rather than concede a point, just disappear. A bunch of losers think that, by ganging up on someone, that "proves" they're right. It's fucking madness.

I agree with rhhardin: I would have thought Hitchens would answer that question with a yes. But maybe I don't understand him well.

I frankly don't understand how one gains absolute moral authority from their experiences; those experiences do absolutely mean that they have something of import to add to the discussion, but I don't automatically give any person authority simply based on their experiences. I want to test their reasoning as well.

And just as a PSA, Right is right! appears to be a moby. Best ignored.

When asked why Atlanta was shutdown for 6 hours and air hubs in Chicago, Newark, Charlotte, and Miami were hit with cascading delays over a guy ducking under security tape....While the same day an estated 18,000 illegal aliens crossed his Borders.....Dubya Bush, the American Churchill said in one case the airport guy could have been a Terrahist Evildoer for all the Heroes keeping us safe knew. But the people who were in all likelihood just hard working good family people....were simply crossing the Border to do work Americans wouldn't do for the same pay..

It was all Part of the Plan. Bush's wealthy Owner class, the Doer-Folk and Jobs Creators....wanted it that way.

...the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God.-- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

I liked that quote a lot when I was young.

But since then I've discovered that there are any number of honest indignant voices out there being honestly indignant, such as Charles Pierce and our own Crack Emcee, and they don't agree on much of anything except they've got the real vanilla and everyone else should, you know, accept it and shut up.

Since then I've discovered that there are any number of honest indignant voices out there being honestly indignant, such as Charles Pierce and our own Crack Emcee, and they don't agree on much of anything except they've got the real vanilla and everyone else should, you know, accept it and shut up.

[Charles] Pierce is noted for his 2003 Globe Magazine profile of Ted Kennedy in which he stated: "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age".[9] The passage was widely misinterpreted as laudatory of Kennedy; the full context makes clear that it was intended as irony.

The democrats are sure up in arms over the simple basic idea that one should be required to show a photo ID to vote.One vote/one person. The democrats want to inspire people to cheat. ie: Voting multiple times, voting with fake names, hiding ballot boxes in the back of cars, criminals voting even though it's illegal etc.. etc.. Who does this? Why it's the democrats.

You must have a photo ID to get into the DNC convention, or an commercial aircraft.

I worry that when the "revered Civil Rights Icon" , John Lewis, finally dies....liberals, progressive Jews, and black activists will all join forces and demand that the Chinese build a statue for him in Washington DC.

Meanwhile, whites generally have it right. When "Revered Vietnam War Ace" Duke Cunningham was revealed to be a lying, corrupt, self-entitled piece of shit - whites had no problems scorning him and tossing him in jail.

"What about my 6 enemy aircraft kills 45 years ago!!!""Yeah, Duke, what of them?? We honor your past, but don't excuse your present piece of shithood status because of it."

Phil Ochs was a major protest singer back in the sixties and he ran neck-and-neck with Bob Dylan on that circuit until Dylan shifted into overdrive and blew past the field into a whole 'nother level of music.

Shouting Thomas said... Apple Computers has a "problem." They need a quota system.

Why? All its top executives are whites males.

This prevents them from understanding the needs of those blessed minorities.

Hopefully we'll have the perfect diversity hire for them after Nov. 6 of this year. 100% Guaranteed to spend all his time on the golf course and only show up to get his picture took, provided you supply waffles and cheeseburgers.

Lewis is my congressman and was a true hero of the civil rights movement. He remains nostalgic, I am afraid. But he was heroic in the sense of taking a step in the direction of a certain beating in the name of a moral ABSOLUTE. He can be forgivenmuch for that.

If John Lewis stood for equal justice under the law, I would shut the fk up. He doesn't. He stands for a Justice Department that lets jack-booted black men with truncheons intimidating voters escape prosecution. He stands for a Justice Department whose leadership instructs its voting rights division not to pursue violations unless the victims are black. Until Lewis understands what equality really means, he should shut the fk up.

Sorry to get all Bayesian on your ass, Mr. Pierce, but the fact that the voting-rights struggle of the 1960s was John Lewis' moment of glory makes it less likely, not more likely, that he's right about it happening all over again today. People with moments of glory in their pasts are always looking for excuses to relive them.

I have NEVER in the last 40 years had any trouble voting at my appointed polling place at the appointed time on the appointed day.

I've had a current ID since I was 16. My ID has had a photo on it since I was 18. At least once each year I pay a visit to the City or County offices for something, on a personal day off work I have pre-arranged with my employer. That seems to be the way government works here. Everyone has to solve a problem in person once every year or two.

On some of those days over the last 40 years, when I have changed residence address, I have applied for a new photo ID and shortly thereafter (in the same building) changed my Voter Registration.

I fail to understand why this is such a challenge that requiring same is de facto vote suppression.

John Lewis is a liberal version of John McCain. A heroic period during his younger days has morphed into a "DON'T ARGUE WITH ME ASSHOLE! I'm a HERO!" attitude. Sorry to say to the Johns, but all glory is fleeting.

Just preventing The Man (generally represented at the polls by a couple of older white women) from demanding an ID doesn't go far enough. When I go to vote, the ladies always ask my name. C'mon - a quasi-official representative of the government asking that can't help but evoke images of a white southern sheriff ambling up to a stopped car and drawling, "What's yer name, boy?"

Maybe not images directly from my life, but that happened a lot in movies that were made only shortly before my birth. Or even in more recent movies that were set several decades ago.

Point being, I'm sure there are literally tens of millions of minority voters who view an older white lady asking "what's your name, honey?" as the next best thing to fire hoses and attack dogs and burning crosses on their lawn. So let's end the tyranny of the volunteer poll worker and just put out a stack of ballots at the polling place. First come, first served. It'll be on the honor system.

Here are a couple of wholly subjective opinions of my own:1. I have a lot of respect for Crack's opinions, and I think he is right about Cult thinking. (I also love Crack's sense of humor. Of late, he rarely has shown it here.)

2. I have no respect for Charles P. Pierce's opinions, which define knee-jerk leftism.

When Pierce states that we are not allowed to argue with Lewis, what he is really saying is we are not allowed to argue with Pierce. Read a few of his political columns, if you have a strong stomach.

I have never talked to so many people who were so thoroughly convinced that their vote didn't matter, that it would not be counted, or that it would be stolen, or that their very right to cast it would be so hamstrung with official bother that it would cease to be a right and simply become another inconvenience.

Battlespace prep for the upcoming, as Garage once put it, epic butthurt. They are getting ready mentally to explain the loss.

I'd shut the hell up about Simpsonp-fking-Bowles and put John Lewis on an airplane and let him tell his story in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and everywhere else this atavistic authoritarian nonsense is going down.

And yet, to hear the speech Pierce so loved, you had to have a valid ID to get in.

But there are NO voting rights for people who are not CITIZENS of the US.

Lewis and other democrats want to perform some sort of arcane victim-transference ritual in which non-citizens (which would include both illegal and legal immigrants) become the logical equivalent of native-born black Americans.

So, of course, if Senator John McCain, former detainee and prisoner of war, were to tell this Charles Pierce person something about the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Pierce would say to him "Yes, sir" and then shut the f--k up.

Pierce is one deep thinker of unassailable logic: Anyone with first-hand experience in some matterspeaks about it with absolute, unchallengeable authority, as from a throne on Mt. Olympus.

Nobody has absolute authority in this world. Nobody. This kind of crap is just another way that pols and others use to bully and manipulate people. Lots of people have unhappy stories and have been made to suffer unjustly but that doesn't give them the right to dictate to others what THEIR priorities are. I did not wrong John Lewis and I was not responsible for any of his suffering so he has no right to tell me how to think about anything. Period.

The comments to the Esquire article are stunning. If Esquire commenters have experience with voter suppression, it is only because they are too stupid to find the polling places -- and the country is better off for it.

"I fail to understand why this is such a challenge that requiring same is de facto vote suppression.

Please explain in detail."

My mother died at the age of 103 eleven years ago. In the 1996 election, her Congressman was Jesse Jackson Jr and she was one of five or six white women still living in her 30 story building in Chicago's South Side. She went downstairs to vote on election day (The polling place was in the lobby) and was turned away by a black poll watcher. In spite of the fact that she had lived in that building for 18 years and had photo ID, she was not allowed to vote. She was probably one of three Republicans in the building.

The end of Pierce's article has been bugging me since I read it this morning. There's this meme that the Democrats are pushing that "the game is rigged." If they can't have dead people voting, if they can't turn away white voters in predominantly black precincts, if, in other words, they can't cheat, then the game is rigged.

The Democrats had their chance in 2009 - 2010 to fix the economy. They applied all their favorite theories, and the result was widespread misery. The electorate rebuked them in November 2010, and the Democrat response has been a massive one-fingered salute to the rest of us. But that won't be the reason Obama loses in a landslide. Nope, it's because "the game is rigged."

creeley23 said...Last year, when Occupy was the hot new darling of the left, John Lewis showed up at Occupy Atlanta and they didn't let him speak.

Yes, I remember that well. They didn't want him to think he was 'above' them. And they used the horrific mic check to shut him up.

Is nothing sacred? Apparently the answer is fluid. It depends on which side you're on, and whether or not there is money of=r political advantage to be had. Trees are now sacred, not just old growth redwoods, but 5th growth, especially if there's money to be made in the lawsuit; muslim anything is sacred, because if you don't think it's ok to slaughter your daughters for talking to a boy on the phone, you must not be on the right side; apparently 'God" is no longer sacred, as we've seen this week. Trayvon became sacred, but the little boys and girls being murdered daily in the streets of Chicago don't get a presidential phone call, there's no advantage to be had.

I dont recall John Lewis mentioning that it was DEMS who used the firehoses, DEMS who restricted the right to vote, DEMS who codified segregation. I would really like him to explain how DEMS sins transmogrify onto Repubs.

Didn't he brazenly lie about what happened on the infamous 'giant gavel' Pelosi strut across the mall in Washington?

Yes and no. I followed that whole brouhaha closely, and there's no question it was baseless, contemptible slander against Tea Party. However if you check closely, it's not clear that Lewis himself made the accusations. Others say that he did. And Lewis, when asked, declined to answer. Which is remarkable. My guess is that Lewis was put in a bad spot, where his sense of honor/honesty was in conflict with his sense of loyalty toward fellow Democrats. He wouldn't lie, but he wouldn't sell out fellow liberal Democrats either by calling them on *their* lie.

All that having been said, he should've stood up for the truth. One would think a much vaunted hero of the Civil Rights movement would sympathize with people falsely accused by those in power.

"Lewis and other democrats want to perform some sort of arcane victim-transference ritual in which non-citizens (which would include both illegal and legal immigrants) become the logical equivalent of native-born black Americans.

Why should this case be any different? Don't you know that every group with an axe to grind - gays, women, illegals, etc. - no matter what the issue, is always the equivalent of native-born black Americans. You might say we carry the weight of the Liberal world on our shoulders/sarc.